Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador
en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in
Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.
A review of "Beyond Nature and Culture: The Traffic of Souls" by Philippe Descola (2012)
Introduction: the end of an old dichotomy
For centuries, Western thought has organised its understanding of the world around a seemingly obvious distinction: on the one hand nature, the realm of physical facts, universal laws, bodies; on the other culture, the realm of norms, meanings, minds. This division, which seems evident to anyone raised within the modern tradition, is not universal. It is not natural. It is not obvious. It is, simply, one way among many of inhabiting the world.
The French anthropologist Philippe Descola, professor emeritus at the Collège de France, devotes his work precisely to demonstrating this: that the nature/culture dichotomy is a recent historical invention, a particular ontological configuration —naturalism— that has imposed itself in the West but does not exhaust the possibilities of human experience. In Beyond Nature and Culture: The Traffic of Souls, published in 2012 in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Descola develops one of the most suggestive sections of his ambitious project: the analysis of how souls circulate between humans and non-humans in the ontologies of animism, and how this circulation dissolves the boundaries that naturalism had erected.
This review explores Descola's proposal, his four ontologies, the concept of the "traffic of souls," and its profound relevance for our research on the origin of art, the S/Y/C model, and Surgical Philosophy.
The four ontologies: a grammar of modes of being
To understand the scope of Descola's proposal, it must be situated within the framework of his major work, Par-delà nature et culture (2005), translated into English in 2013. There, Descola proposes that the ways in which human beings conceive the world are neither infinite nor arbitrary. They are organised around four fundamental ontologies —four "modes of identification"— that define how continuities and discontinuities between humans and non-humans are distributed.
These four ontologies are:
Animism: non-humans possess the same interiority as humans —soul, intentionality, consciousness— but differ in their corporality. Jaguars, plants, rivers are persons, but with different bodies. What distinguishes them from us is not their lack of soul, but their physical form, their habits, their capacities.
Totemism: humans and non-humans share both interiority and corporality, but are organised into discrete categories, each with a set of moral and physical properties that define its members. The beings of the world are distributed into "species" that are, at the same time, social and natural categories.
Naturalism: the modern Western ontology. Humans and non-humans share a corporality —we are made of the same matter, subject to the same physical laws— but differ radically in their interiority. Only humans possess culture, meaning, reflective consciousness. Other beings are pure nature.
Analogism: a regime of generalised discontinuities, where all beings in the world are different from one another, but are connected through networks of correspondences, analogies, and similarities. It is the ontology Descola associates with the cosmologies of China, West Africa, and the Andes.
These four ontologies are not "beliefs" that peoples have about the world. They are deep grammars that structure perception, action, and thought. They are the ways in which the world becomes intelligible, habitable, meaningful. And they are, above all, modes of relation: they do not describe what there is, but how we relate to what there is.
The traffic of souls: when interiority circulates
The article at hand, The Traffic of Souls, focuses on one of these ontologies —animism— and explores how it works in practice. The question Descola poses is the following: if in animism humans and non-humans share the same interiority, how is that continuity managed? How are souls distributed? What implications does this have for social life, for hunting, for eating, for death?
Descola's answer is that souls circulate. They are not permanently fixed to bodies, they are not stable properties of individuals. They are in constant transit: they pass from animals to humans, from humans to spirits, from the living to the dead, from the dead to the living. Social life, in animist societies, consists largely in managing that traffic: negotiating, regulating, channelling the flow of souls that traverses the cosmos.
Descola analyses this traffic through several ethnographic examples, mainly from Amazonia. In these societies, hunting is not a simple economic activity. It is a cosmological act of enormous gravity: killing an animal is killing a person, a relative, an affine. Shamans act as diplomats between worlds: they negotiate with animal spirits, offer compensation, establish pacts. The relationship between humans and animals is a social relationship, mediated by exchange, reciprocity, debt.
This traffic of souls has profound consequences for the understanding of the person. In animism, the person is not a closed, autonomous entity, defined by their individual body. It is a knot in a network of relations, a point of passage in a flow of souls that transcends it. Personal identity is not a private property, but a relational achievement: one becomes a person through one's bonds with other beings, human and non-human. Death is not the end of the person, but their transformation: the soul continues its journey, is reincarnated, becomes something else.
Makapansgat: the first traffic of souls
If animism holds that interiority circulates between humans and non-humans, can we extend that continuity to inanimate objects? Can a pebble have a soul? The question is not as far-fetched as it seems. In many animist ontologies, objects —stones, branches, mountains, rivers— are not mere aggregates of inert matter. They are beings with whom one can establish a relationship, to whom one can offer, with whom one can negotiate.
And here is where Makapansgat enters the scene. The famous reddish jasper pebble, collected by an australopithecine more than three million years ago and transported to their dwelling, is the oldest testimony we have of a gesture that seems to anticipate animism. Someone —a hominin, a remote ancestor— saw in that stone something more than a stone. They saw a face. And they did not only see it: they valued it, kept it, made it part of their home.
Can we call this animism? Perhaps that is premature. Animism, as Descola describes it, implies a complex cosmological system, with shamans, rituals, negotiations, an economy of exchanges between species. Makapansgat offers us nothing of that. It offers us, instead, a minimal gesture: the collection of an inanimate object to which a meaning is attributed that transcends its immediate utility.
But that minimal gesture is, perhaps, the germ of what would later become animism. If animism consists of extending interiority beyond the human species, the australopithecine of Makapansgat was the first to take that step. We do not know whether they believed the stone had a soul, or whether they considered it a relative, or whether they expected something from it. We know they picked it up, carried it with them, kept it. And that act —the act of keeping an object for what it means, not for what it serves— is the founding act of all symbolic relation with the world.
We can expand that first act. We can imagine the australopithecine finding the stone, looking at it, recognising a face in it. We can imagine them carrying it to their group, showing it to others, leaving it in a special place in their dwelling. We can imagine that, around that stone, the first stories were woven, the first shared gestures, the first collective meanings. We have no proof of any of this. But the stone is there, and its presence authorises us to think that something happened.
The traffic of souls, in Descola, is a practical reality: it is lived, negotiated, managed every day. The hunter who kills an animal negotiates with its spirit. The shaman who travels to the world of the dead establishes pacts with the ancestors. Is not the gatherer who finds an object and keeps it for the future within their dwelling an incipient form of that same traffic? Are they not establishing, with that object, a relationship that transcends mere utility? Are they not, in a certain way, animating inert matter?
Perhaps so. Perhaps animism is not a late invention of complex societies, but a primordial disposition of the human nervous system: the tendency to attribute interiority, agency, intention, to everything around us. Studies on infant cognition and on social perception suggest that this disposition is early and universal. Young children attribute life to objects; adults attribute it to animals, to machines, to institutions. Animism, from this perspective, would not be a "primitive belief," but a biological tendency that cultures shape in different ways.
Makapansgat would be, then, the first testimony of that tendency. The first object kept not for its utility, but for its meaning. The first indication that the human nervous system was already disposed to see souls where there is only matter.
Souls as operators of continuity
The concept of the "traffic of souls" is, at bottom, an analytical tool for thinking about the continuity between humans and non-humans. In naturalism, that continuity is thought in physical terms: we are all made of the same matter, we are all part of nature. In animism, it is thought in spiritual terms: we all share the same interiority, the same capacity to feel, to want, to signify.
But the crucial difference is that, in animism, that continuity is not a theoretical abstraction. It is a practical reality: it is lived, negotiated, managed every day. The hunter who kills an animal knows they are killing a person. The shaman who travels to the spirit world knows they are visiting relatives. The child who learns to respect animals knows they are learning to respect beings that have a soul, that suffer, that remember. And the australopithecine who picks up a stone shaped like a face knows —or intuits— that they are establishing a relationship with something that transcends matter.
This lived continuity has profound implications for ethics. If animals are persons, killing them is a morally grave act, requiring justification, compensation, ritual. If plants have a soul, gathering them is an act of reciprocity, not of simple extraction. If stones can have a face, picking them up is an act of recognition, not of mere appropriation. The relationship with the environment is not instrumental, but social: it is mediated by norms, obligations, affections.
Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)
Descola's proposal offers a conceptual framework of enormous value for our research on the Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C (Mallo, 2023, 2025, 2026a, 2026b). His four ontologies, and in particular animism and the traffic of souls, illuminate crucial aspects of the three dimensions of our thesis.
The S (Survival) dimension manifests in the centrality of hunting in animist societies. Material survival —obtaining food, protecting oneself from predators— is a constant concern. But in animism, survival is not only a matter of technical efficiency. It is a cosmological question: in order to survive, one must negotiate with spirits, maintain good relations with animals, respect the rules of the traffic of souls. Survival is embodied in a system of relations that transcends the purely biological. And at Makapansgat, survival is expanded: it is no longer only that of the body, but that of meaning, of the bond, of the group's memory.
The Y (Symbolon) dimension is illuminated by the notion of shared interiority. In animism, all beings —humans, animals, plants, spirits, and perhaps also stones— possess an interiority that manifests through shared codes: language, rituals, dreams, shamanic visions. Symbolon, in our thesis, is the act of recognition through shared codes. In animism, that recognition extends beyond the species: we recognise animals as persons, we recognise ourselves in them, we bind ourselves through a common ground of interiority. And at Makapansgat, recognition extends beyond the living: the australopithecine recognises a face in a stone, establishes a bond with an inanimate object, inaugurates a mode of relation that is no longer purely instrumental.
The C (Wholeness) dimension manifests in the search for cosmic balance. The traffic of souls is not chaos; it is a regulated system, an economy of exchanges that seeks to maintain balance between humans, animals, spirits, and the dead. Wholeness, in animism, is the harmony of the cosmos, the integration of all beings into a coherent whole where each has its place, its obligations, its rights. This search for wholeness is analogous to the one that, in naturalism, is expressed in the idea of natural law or ecological balance. But in animism, wholeness is not an objective fact: it is a fragile achievement, constantly threatened by excess, violence, transgression. And at Makapansgat, wholeness is hinted at: the object collected, kept, conserved, is an attempt to close a circle, to integrate the strange into one's own, to give a place to what had none.
Surgical Philosophy invites us to make a precise analytical cut in Descola's work. It is not about accepting his four ontologies as a definitive taxonomy without more —Descola himself insists that they are models for thinking, not eternal essences—. It is about recognising that his proposal opens a space of comparison that the nature/culture dichotomy had closed off. Surgical Philosophy allows us to dissect that dichotomy, to show its historicity, its contingency, its particularity. And it allows us to suture a broader framework where the different ontologies —animism, totemism, naturalism, analogism— can be thought on equal footing, without evolutionary hierarchies, without presuppositions of superiority. And within that framework, Makapansgat ceases to be a mere archaeological curiosity and becomes a milestone in the history of the relationship between human beings and the world.
Implications for the study of the origin of art
Descola's proposal has profound implications for research on the origin of art. If the nature/culture dichotomy is not universal, then the categories with which we have thought about prehistoric art —"representation," "symbol," "expression"— may be biased by naturalism.
In naturalism, art is a cultural activity that is distinguished from nature. The artist is a human subject who creates objects that represent the natural world or express their cultural interiority. Cave paintings, from this perspective, are representations of animals: images that "stand for" real animals, that symbolise them, that communicate them.
But in animism, this distinction is blurred. Paintings of animals are not representations of animals: they are manifestations of their presence, vehicles of their agency, indexes of their soul. The artist does not "represent" a bison: they establish a relationship with it, summon it, negotiate with it, incorporate it into the human world. Art, in animism, is not an activity separated from social and cosmological life. It is a practice of the traffic of souls, a way of managing relations with non-humans.
This perspective invites us to reread prehistoric art from a different angle. The paintings of Lascaux or Chauvet are not simply "representations" of Pleistocene fauna. They are cosmological acts: hunting rituals, negotiations with spirits, vehicles of agency. Palaeolithic artists were not "artists" in the modern sense of the term. They were shamans, hunters, persons who used images to act upon the world, to establish relationships, to manage the traffic of souls. And Makapansgat, three million years earlier, is the first testimony of that gesture: the gesture of establishing a relationship with an object, of attributing meaning to it, of incorporating it into the human world.
Descola's proposal reminds us that art, in its origin, was not an autonomous activity, separated from life, confined to a specialised domain. It was a total practice, integrated into economy, religion, politics, ecology. Art was, in animism, the language of the traffic of souls. And that language began to be stammered, perhaps, with the gesture of an australopithecine who picked up a stone and kept it.
Final considerations: art as traffic of relations
Philippe Descola's work is one of those contributions that transform our gaze on the world and on ourselves. His analysis of the traffic of souls forces us to rethink the categories with which we have organised experience: nature and culture, human and non-human, body and soul, subject and object. He shows us that these categories are not universal, but historical, contingent, situated.
For our research on the origin of art, the lesson is clear: art was not born as an activity of representation, but as a practice of relation. It was not born from the need to copy the world, but from the need to negotiate with it. Art was, from its origins, a traffic of souls, an exchange between humans and non-humans, a bridge between worlds. And Makapansgat, with its stone shaped like a face, is the first vestige of that traffic: the gesture of a being who, for the first time, saw in inert matter an interlocutor.
Descola taught us to see ontologies as grammars of existence. We add: art is the language of those grammars. Without the traffic of souls, there would be no art. Without art, there would be no way to manage the traffic. Art is, at its root, the form of relation. And relation, like the Makapansgat pebble, can begin with a simple gesture: picking up a stone and keeping it.
References
Descola, P. (2012). Beyond nature and culture: The traffic of souls (J. Lloyd, Trans.). HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, *2*(1), 473–500. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau2.1.021
Descola, P. (2013). Beyond nature and culture (J. Lloyd, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 2005)
Mallo, B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Doctoral thesis, University of the Basque Country - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea]. ADDI Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701
Mallo, B. (2025). Arte y biología: Una aproximación neurofilosófica al origen de la experiencia estética. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y5WZMK
Mallo, B. (2025). Art and biology: A neurophilosophical approach to the origin of aesthetic experience. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0E8Y6C2XN
Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196
Mallo, B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo [Kindle edition]. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C
Mallo, B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197
Autor / Author
Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
Bernabé Mallo
PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.
Enlaces / Links
Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed: https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
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Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects:
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens